Daily UK fx volumes fall 5 pct in 6 months to Oct-BoE survey

LONDON, Jan 29 Average daily turnover in UK
foreign exchange markets fell 5 percent in the six months to
October 2012 to hit its lowest since October 2010, a Bank of
England survey showed on Tuesday.

Average daily turnover of spot, outright forwards,
non-deliverable forwards, swaps, FX options and currency swaps
totalled $1.919 trillion, down from $2.014 trillion in April and
a 7 percent drop from the same period in 2011, the BoE said.

Spot FX activity fell 6 percent to $678 billion per day from
$719 billion in April.

The daily turnover in FX swaps dropped 4 percent to $920
billion per day, while FX options trading fell to $102 billion
per day from $114 billion in April.

The results chime with data from the likes of FX settlement
system CLS Bank and the two major electronic trading systems -
EBS, owned by ICAP Plc, and Thomson Reuters -
which all revealed a drop in volume in the second half of 2012.

Sharply lower volumes hurt banks' currency trading
activities late last year, due partly to the European Central
Bank's actions to calm the euro zone crisis which drove down
volatility and partly to a slowdown in global growth.

According to the BoE's survey of 30 financial institutions,
trading in the U.S. dollar increased to 87.6 percent from 86.6
percent in April. There the total sum of the percentage shares
totals 200 percent not 100 percent as two currencies are
involved in each transaction.

The euro, the second most actively traded currency, saw its
share dip to 41.7 percent from 43.4 percent.

Trade in the British pound, Japanese yen and
Swiss franc all fell, while trading rose in growth- and
commodity-linked currencies, including the Australian,
Canadian and New Zealand dollars and the
Mexican peso.

Data from FX settlement system CLS Bank, which was also
released on Tuesday, showed global average traded values in
spot, swaps and forwards were down 7 percent from a year
earlier. But it rose 4 percent in October to $1.713 trillion
from April's $1.65 trillion.

The BoE data was released as part of a global semi-annual
survey of FX turnover.

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